Undercover Blues (1993)

September 11, 1993

Review/Film;
A Loving Pair of Spies Take Baby to Work

By VINCENT CANBY

Published: September 11, 1993

Because it relies so heavily on manners identified with either the James Bond or "Thin Man" movies, you might suspect that "Undercover Blues" would be a sort of hybrid rip-off. The new film also uses New Orleans locations with the tenacity of a sightseer who won't rest until his feet bleed. The movie was made a year ago, but opened in New York theaters only yesterday.

Bad signs, all.

Possibly because of those signs, or at least in part, "Undercover Blues" turns out to seem a most genial surprise, a comic update of cold war espionage movies that, because of the New Orleans location, has the enhanced charm of a stolen holiday. It stars Kathleen Turner and Dennis Quaid, playing extremely well together, as Jane and Jeff Blue, who recall Nora and Nick Charles without making you wince. Jane and Jeff are wise-cracking, loving, incredibly adept American spies on maternity leave in New Orleans with their baby daughter in constant tow.

Exactly what agency might be employing Jane and Jeff is never clear, though they have apparently worked for both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. When first met, they have just arrived in New Orleans to get away from it all. Jeff immediately makes a lifetime enemy of Muerte (Stanley Tucci), a vicious but hilariously incompetent mugger he calls Morty.

The next day they are enlisted to track down an international super-criminal named Novacek (Fiona Shaw), who was once the head of the secret police in Communist Czechoslovakia. The woman has apparently stolen a half-dozen containers of a new plastic explosive so dangerous that even the United States Army won't use it. It's beyond analyzing how Jane, Jeff, Muerte and Novacek all happen to come together for the frenetic climax in a Louisiana salt mine. Somehow they do.

Reason is beside the point of "Undercover Blues," as written by Ian Abrams and directed by Herbert Ross. The movie has enough style to make you overlook reason and the occasionally erratic continuity. It also has moments of explosive comedy, not so arbitrarily set in the New Orleans zoo, a picturesque restaurant in the French Quarter and the old French Market.

From time to time the jolly banter between Jane and Jeff comes close to being twee, but often it is as laugh-out-loud funny as it means to be. Mr. Ross also manages to direct the scenes involving the baby in such a way that they are both very funny and crazily accurate. The baby, played by 11-month-old Michelle Schuelke, is a scene-stealer in the tradition of W. C. Fields's arch-foe, Baby LeRoy, and Robert Altman's grandson, Welsey Ivan Hurt, who played Swee' Pea in Mr. Altman's "Popeye" (1980).

Ms. Turner, a seriously funny comedienne, has her best role since "The War of the Roses," though "Undercover Blues" itself is not in the same category. The laughs she gets are genuine. They don't come from a sit-com reading of the lines. Mr. Quaid seems to work harder to get the same results, maybe because he's required to smile too often. Ms. Shaw is not on the screen that much, but she's also a delight. Good support is given by Obba Babatunde and Larry Miller as two hopelessly outwitted New Orleans detectives.

This movie is a breeze.

"Undercover Blues" has been rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes some mildly vulgar language and scenes that are sexually suggestive.
Undercover Blues